Members of Islamist group controlling local football club

Researcher concerned that radicals now running Brøndby's oldest football club have direct access to young people

Zahid Mansoor (third from right, standing) says he has no intention of mixing religion and football (Photo: BSI)

May 7, 201415:16

by RW

Last year at an extraordinary general meeting of the Brøndby Strand football club (BSI), Hizb ut-Tahrir members Zahid Mansoor and Ibrahim Atrach were given places on the club’s board. Today, they are respectively the chairman and treasurer of the club, a fact that has made some nervous.

One of the leading researchers in Hizb ut-Tahrir, Kirstine Sinclair from the University of Southern Denmark, fears that the new board members will use the club to advance their religious agenda.

“It is unpleasant that they lead a football club that has direct access to young men and boys,” Sinclair told Ekstra Bladet newspaper. “They do not have a democratic spirit and they discriminate against other minority groups in society,” Sinclair said, referring to Hizb ut-Tahrir’s stated disdain for homosexuals and Jews.

What? No beer?
One of the first moves Mansoor made after taking power was to ban the sale of beer at matches.

“Alcohol cannot be reconciled with football,” he told Ekstra Bladet. Some fear that hotdogs and sausages are next in his crosshairs, but Mansoor says no.

“As for pork, what the tenants want to sell is not something that we want to get involved in,” he said.

He also guaranteed “100 percent” that religion would not be mixed with football at Brøndby Strand.